


Falling

by fireworksandcryofreeze



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, pre-CAWS to post-CACW
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 07:07:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11202954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fireworksandcryofreeze/pseuds/fireworksandcryofreeze
Summary: When Steve woke up 70 years into the future, he expected he would dream about something new—the Valkyrie crashing into the water, walking around what should be familiar streets and recognizing almost nothing, seeing Peggy in those moments when she doesn't remember him, swarms of aliens coming out of the sky tearing the city to pieces. Instead, he had the same dream he dreamt every night 70 years ago. Every night, he dreamed of Bucky falling.





	Falling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rasetsunyo](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Rasetsunyo).



[ ](http://s1243.photobucket.com/user/fallingrbbartbyrasetsunyo/media/caprevbb_rasetsunyo_coloured_zps4kdiaba9.png.html)

Steve had never been afraid of heights. And he still wasn’t, not really. He loved taking in the views of the DC skyline from the SHIELD conference rooms’ windows that somehow seemed not to distract any of the other agents; he sometimes went out on his building’s fire escape with a sketchpad in one hand and a beer in the other just the sentimentality of it, even if the nostalgic act was often more painful than pleasurable; and he could stomach the ridiculous glass elevators in the SHIELD office so long as he kept a hand pressed to the glass to remind himself that there was no way that he could fall. It wasn’t the sheer fact of being high-up that bothered him so much as being somewhere where the only thing preventing him from falling was himself. Suddenly, his legs would feel unreliable and the rush of blood pumping through his ears made him feel like everything is spinning. The edge was right there. Right there, and it would be too easy to slip, plummet feet first into that void so deep he could hardly see the bottom. And then he saw a hand, reaching up to him, and a voice that was his own but also far away screamed Bucky, and the whip of frost-laden air struck his face as he stood, arm still reaching out—

“Cap,” Natasha said, taking a step closer to put her hand on his shoulder, “everything all right?”

Even though her hand was tiny, it felt like it was grounding his feet to the rooftop, making it impossible for him to fall. Still it took a moment for him to come back to himself and realize what was happening. They were on the rooftop of a building in DC. Clint was there too on the other side of the building, seemingly oblivious to what was happening with Steve and Natasha. They were on a recognizance mission, just waiting for their mark to arrive.

“Yes,” Steve said after a considerable pause which probably tipped Natasha off to the fact that everything was not, in fact, all right, but she nodded and pulled her hand off of him anyway.

Steve managed to keep it together for the rest of the mission. Fortunately, their mark showed up right when they expected him too, and they didn’t have to spend much longer on the roof.

After they brought the man in for questioning, they went straight into debriefing. The meeting didn’t take long since the mission had gone exactly to plan—something that didn’t happen often—but the meeting stretched on for Steve, as he waited for Natasha to bring up his weird behavior on the roof. He didn’t think that she had put the pieces together and realized that it was the height that had affected him since he’d done a decent job of hiding it up until this point—he could mostly put his fear of heights out of his mind on missions or in battle so long as he was constantly moving, constantly focused on something else—but tonight there had been little to do but wait and look over the edge and think about how it would feel to plummet onto the asphalt below. But Natasha didn’t bring it up in the meeting, and afterward, all she said to him was “go get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning,” with a small, protective smile that he’d only recently gotten to know her well enough to earn.  
Back in his apartment, he stood by the window, looking at the city lights from his fourth-story window wondering how it was that this didn’t bother him but the rooftop had sent him spiraling. A part of him was hoping that if he stared at the view long enough, he’d convince his brain not to be scared when facing the same height with no walls and glass between him, keeping him safe. But most of him was just putting off the inevitable of going to bed. He rubbed a hand against the stubble on his face, trying to soothe away some of the weariness he was feeling. Despite the serum, he still needed eight hours of sleep a night. He could stay up for much longer than the average person when needed or get far fewer hours of sleep for consecutive nights without it impacting him physically, but he’d feel mentally fatigued. It was a hard feeling to explain, how his body felt fine to go through the day normally, but inside he felt heavy and slow to process what was going on around him. When he’d mentioned it to Bruce, he’d said something about how the brain needed sleep to process memories and information or something like that so it made sense that Steve could be mentally fatigued but still ready to fight. No matter the science behind it, Steve knew that it meant putting off sleep was a bad plan because he’d have to sleep eventually and the longer he waited, the worse he would feel in the morning. But still, he had a feeling that tonight was going to be a bad night, so he let the clock creep past midnight and then one until it was 1:45, and his guilt over procrastinating overtook his dread of going to sleep.

When Steve woke up 70 years into the future, he expected he would dream about something new—the Valkyrie crashing into the water, walking around what should be familiar streets and recognizing almost nothing, seeing Peggy in those moments when she doesn't remember him, swarms of aliens coming out of the sky tearing the city to pieces. Instead, he had the same dream he dreamt every night 70 years ago. Every night, he dreamed of Bucky falling.

He’d expected it to get boring at some point. Like watching a horror movie over and over again, it couldn’t be as bad if he knew when the scary bit was going to happen and what it was going to be. But he still woke from the dream heart racing and chilled and there was always a moment where he felt like he was still standing in the doorway of that train in the biting wind before he realized that he was just in bed and the cold was just the layer of sweat covering him.

Most nights he had the dream once. If he was lucky, he wouldn’t have it at all, but if he wasn’t lucky, well four times was his record. He suspected it might have been higher, but now after waking for a third time, he’d call it quits for the night and sit on his sofa watching night fade into morning.  
His final incorrect assumption about the nightmare was that eventually it would stop. Before the plane crash, he hadn’t thought much of the reoccurrences; the fall had been so recent and with all the fighting there wasn’t much time to process and grieve like he needed to. And it had made some sense after waking up in the future as well. His mind was still back in the forties even if he no longer was. He kept waiting for it to stop or for it at least to not happen as often as it did, but instead he’d been having the dream more and more often. He couldn’t think of the last time he slept peacefully through the whole night.

 

 

Steve stared down at the dark water from the hanger door of the jet wondering if this is some sort of karmic retribution for trying to keep his increasing fear of heights from his team even though it was getting worse. Plane rides were nearly unbearable, and he had started climbing the forty-plus flights of stairs to get to his meetings in SHIELD whenever he thought he’d be able to do it with no one noticing. And the nightmares, well, let’s just say the record is now six and counting.

Or maybe Natasha had orchestrated this to test him? He glanced over at where she stood, standing in a way that was simultaneously poised for the coming battle and also relaxed, which was something Steve had never seen anyone else pull off. No, Nat wouldn’t do something like that. She liked to push his buttons, but she’d never intentionally put him in a situation she thought could hurt him. The likelihood was that this was neither karma nor a test, just a side effect of his weird job. The breathing techniques that he’d found online (after breaking down and googling “how to get over fear of heights”) had been helpful during the flight, but were doing little to steady him now. In, two, three, four, hold, two, three, four, out, two, three, four, hold, two, three, four. He got through the pattern twice before his rapid pulse won out against his attempt to keep his breathing in check and his lungs joined his heart’s rebellion. Maybe if he just jumped, things would be better. If he just got it over with and fell then maybe he could stop being scared of falling all the time because he would know what it would be like. Before he could think his way into panicking over his decision, Steve flung himself out the jet without the parachute.

The fall was dizzying. Somehow both worse and better than he had imagined it would be. Better because it was over so quickly, Steve hadn’t had time to process or get his bearing before hitting the water. Worse because what he hadn’t given much thought was what would happen after he stopped falling. The water was dark to the point that Steve could only be certain his eyes were open by the prickle of salt in his eyes, and he had no way to know which direction was up or down. And then there was the cold. The cold that had seeped everywhere and bit at his skin. A cold that made his heart feel heavy and strained in his chest. I wonder if this is how Bucky felt as he froze to death in a heap of snow, a voice whispered as Steve kicked in the direction of what he thought was toward the surface, that is if he didn’t die on impact.  
Steve’s head rose about the surface, and he gasped for air. He could already tell that he had made things worse, not better.

 

 

Correction: Steve’s final incorrect assumption about the nightmare was that dreaming about something else would be a relief. He hadn’t thought that there could be anything worse than watching his best friend die over and over again, but now he had started to realize that there were things worse than death. Like being tortured and brainwashed and used as a weapon. Like having to fight the person you love most in the world who doesn’t even remember their own name let alone yours.

Now he dreams of new memories: of who the hell is Bucky, of those awful noises Bucky made when he was trapped under a piece of the collapsing helicarrier, of Bucky hitting him in the face with that metal arm branded with Hydra’s symbol. But even those dreams are the worst. The worst are where the old meets the new, when he watches Bucky fall and instead of waking up like he usually would, he opens his eyes to see the Soldier standing above him a knife pointed at his throat. In these dreams, the Soldier demands answers to questions that have plagued Steve since the mask first came off. Why didn’t you look for me? You just left me there for dead. Didn’t you think I deserved to be found even if it was just so that I could be buried in a grave rather than under the snow? Why didn’t you jump after me? If I survived that fall, Captain fucking America definitely could have. You could’ve prevented all of this, but you didn’t, did you. You just watched me fall and left me there to rot.

A week after getting out of the hospital, Steve caved and bought himself one of those ridiculously complicated espresso machines. The caffeine helped make up for some of the sleep he was losing, but only in high dosages. He actively tried to not count how many cups of espresso he had in a day because the number had quickly crossed the line between moderate addiction and highly concerning. But with everything that was happening in the aftermath of SHIELD falling to pieces, there was too much to do for Steve to be exhausted all the time. He needed to keep it together and, he reassured himself, the coffee was just a temporary solution until everything was back under control. The problem was though, it didn’t look like that was going to happen anytime soon.

After months of mopping up the mess SHIELD had become, tracking down Hydra agents, and dealing with the press, things had finally calmed down enough for Steve to have time to focus on other things. Which meant that he finally could begin looking for Bucky in earnest. Sam and Natasha had both warned him about getting his hopes up about the state Bucky would be in if they managed to track him down. Steve appreciated their concern, and it’s not like he expected to find Bucky and have things go right back to the way they were in the forties, but he knew that there was a little bit of Bucky still left in there. If he had been all Soldier, he would’ve let Steve die, but instead he dived into the water after Steve and carried him to shore. Brain-washed and sent to kill you and still he was willing to jump after you, a voice nagged. Steve shoved it down with all the other traitorous thoughts that worked to distract him from his mission. For so long after waking up Steve had been searching for a purpose. Something to make waking up to a world where everyone he knew was either dead or nearly dead feel worth it, and now he had found that purpose. He was going to find Bucky, bring him home, and spend the rest of his life working to undo the damage Hydra had caused, and nothing was going to get in his way, especially not himself.

 

 

The mission had barely started and already Steve knew that it was going to be a long one. They had gotten word of Hydra agents who had been spotted in Raleigh, North Carolina. No one was certain what it was that they were doing there. They could’ve been plotting something or maybe they were just hiding out and regrouping. Either way, Steve, Natasha, and Sam had become the unofficial task force in charge of tracking down and catching ex-SHIELD Hydra agents. It served a double purpose in that they were able to keep helping deal with the mess Hydra had created and that every Hydra agent they brought in alive was a potential lead on their mission to track down Bucky. From what they could tell, Hydra was currently in shambles since the majority of their members had been a part of SHIELD and many of them had either died in the battle or captured after it, so it seemed likely that Bucky had managed to get away from Hydra and was hiding somewhere on his own. But Steve was still hopeful that they would find someone who had heard something about his whereabouts or, at the very least, that learning more about how the Soldier’s training might help Steve understand where the Soldier would go to hide out in the way that looking in all the places he suspected Bucky would go did not. (Step one in his plan to find Bucky had been to look everywhere he thought Bucky would consider a safe place to hide had Bucky been himself. After several weeks of scouring every inch of Brooklyn, Bucky’s training base, and every reconnaissance point in Europe he could remember from the war, he had had to move on to step two and accept that the person he was looking for was more Soldier than Bucky Barnes. But he’d left security systems at all the locations just in case that eventually changed.)

Already on edge from another nightmare-ridden night and the flight down there, Steve had a nagging feeling as he wandered around the crowded park searching for the agents they had come to find. The fact that their intelligence had placed the agents at a local park near the apartment where the agents had been staying made Steve wonder if they knew that Steve and the others were on to them. He couldn't picture Hydra agents going to a sculpture garden/hiking trail unless there was some nefarious motivation behind it. Steve and Natasha entered on foot, searching the crowd for the two men they were there to find, while Sam scoped things out overhead. It was a Saturday morning on a nice May day where it wasn't too hot or too cold so the park was packed full of people and children either running around or pushed in strollers. The risk for innocent bystanders getting hurt during this mission was much higher than Steve liked it to be.

"Hey," Sam's voice came through on the earpieces they were all wearing," I see them. They're walking up the path that leads into the woods. I'm going to have to land to follow them. And guys, I'd hurry. They don't exactly look like they're here for a casual stroll."

Steve glanced around until he spotted the path Sam was talking about and started jogging over there. It was clear that the agents knew they were there so there was no point in looking like he wasn't in a hurry, but still he didn't want to worry the crowd by breaking into a full run. Natasha was by his side by the time Steve had entered the trees. Both of them were wearing running clothes rather than their usual mission attire, so hopefully they would look like two friends out for a jog.

Sam's voice crackled through the earpiece again, "The path leads to a bridge and there doesn't seem to be a way to avoid crossing it. I'm going to land on the other side of it and they'll be trapped between us. Be careful, though, there are a lot of civilians up here."

"Got it," Natasha replied, angling her head toward Steve so it would look like she was talking to him. "Try to land somewhere they won't see you."

"On it," Sam said

Steve's breath caught on the word bridge, but he did his best to push back that spike of worry. They were in the middle of a mission; there were families and children here that needed him to be at his best, not distracted by just the thought of being somewhere with a drop below him. Besides, for all he knew, it would just be a little bridge over a pond or something. He pushed his speed up to almost a run and Natasha adjusted her pace beside him. As they jogged, Steve noticed as the path began to slope upwards beneath his feet. It was a slope that warned of a bridge that Steve was not going to enjoy. Of course, it wasn't until they could see the gap in the trees and hear the rush of cars on the highway, that they spotted the backs of the two Hydra agents both running at full speed, dodging between the other people on the path. Steve took a deep breath as he stepped out of the path in the woods and onto the metal bridge. Sam hadn't mentioned that it was a path over a highway, and Steve could hardly tear his eyes away from the cars flying past below him. They were too loud for him to ignore and their roar beneath him was dizzying. The rails on the edge of the fence looked sturdy, but perhaps not sturdy enough to withstand a fight between a super soldier and whatever weapons the Hydra agents were sure to have on them. Steve just kept on running. He could see Sam standing firm in the middle of the far end of the bridge and the Hydra agents sprinting toward Sam. He reached the center of the bridge by the time he caught up to them, grabbing the agent closest to him by the shoulder and pulling him back. He was hoping that if he caught the man off guard, he'd be able to cuff him before the man even had a chance to put up a fight. But Hydra agents were annoyingly scrappy and this one was no different, managing to pull a gun out of his coat as Steve spun the man around to face him. Steve let go of the man's shoulder reaching out to try and knock the gun out of the man's hand before he could shoot it. The people near them on the bridge must have spotted the gun, because there was screaming, and Steve could see people running out of the corner of his eye. His fist connected with the gun, sending it flying out of the man's hand and onto the ground, skidding toward the side of the bridge. The agent scrambled after it, and Steve followed, grateful that the bystanders had run off and weren't in the path of this fight. The agent lunged for the gun, but Steve kicked it and it flew through the small gap between the bottom of the bridge and the fencing on the sides. Steve was distracted by watching the way it plummeted toward the road below, hitting the ground just to be crushed by tire after tire in an unrelenting wave of vehicles. You didn't realize how fast seventy miles per hour was until you were seeing it from above rather than from inside the car. Steve was pulled from the thought of being crushed under those tires by a punch to his face. The agent had taken advantage of Steve's distraction to get the jump on him. Before Steve could pull himself together enough to respond, Natasha was there, pulling the man to the ground and cuffing him. Sam stood a few feet away by the other agent who was seemingly unconscious but still breathing. Natasha grabbed the agent by Steve's feet and threw him in front of Sam.

"Watch them for a sec," she said to Sam. She turned back to Steve, grabbed him by the wrist, and said "Come on."

Steve let himself be dragged off of the bridge and back onto the path under the trees. He could've broken her grip with little effort, but instead, he let her guide him back to safety not even trying to bother hiding his ragged breaths. She already knew; he'd already let this thing get the best of him.

"I thought you had this under control," she said when they were off of the bridge. So she had known then, Steve had wondered ever since the rooftop mission if she suspected.

"So did I," he said.

"You could've cost us that mission," she half-shouted. He suspected if they were in private, and Natasha wasn't concerned about frightening the people still on the trail more than they were already freaked out from the fighting that she would've been yelling and pacing. As it was her anger seemed larger than her constrained hand gestures. "What if he'd had another weapon? What if there had been a civilian close by enough that he could've grabbed them? What if Sam and I had still been busy with the other one? If I hadn't intervened, would you have been able to pull it together enough to fight back?"

Natasha paused as if to wait for Steve's answers, but he didn't have any for her, so he just stood there silently.

Natasha sighed heavily. "You stay here. Sam and I can take this from here, and when we get back" she trailed off and took a moment to think about how she wanted to finish the sentence. "You're off missions until you get some help."

 

 

Things had been getting better for Steve, they really had. He'd started going to see a therapist, and that had been helping him a lot. She'd helped him see the connection between the nightmares and his fear of heights. She'd helped him realize that he'd been carrying around guilt for years, that he'd made Bucky's fall his own fault in his mind, and even though he did still feel guilty and responsible for what had happened to Bucky, he at least had come to realize that he was not entirely to blame and that he had done the best he could've in that situation. And while things weren't totally fixed, they were manageable again. He still had nightmares, but he was sleeping a decent amount again and no longer reliant on caffeine to get through the day, and his fear of heights wasn't gone, but he had the tools to handle it now. It took half a year before Natasha had let him come on missions again, which was horribly frustrating, but he understood where she was coming from, and Natasha and Sam never stopped helping him look for Bucky.

But of course, things never stayed good for Steve for very long, so naturally when they finally found Bucky, things didn't go how they hoped they would. He'd found Bucky beaten down and feeling like maybe he wasn't worth saving. Of all the things Steve had considered might happen when he found Bucky, he never thought that Bucky might not want to be saved. And now Bucky was in cryofreeze, and Steve was in Wakanda with nothing to do but sit around and think about all the bad decisions that had gotten him here, and what he could've done or said to make Bucky see himself the way that Steve saw him. See himself as the best person Steve had ever known and as a person who had hurt and been hurt but was still so good and worthy of being helped. And the nightmares were back in full force, so that wasn't helping. Steve knew that he was spiraling back into the state he'd been in when Natasha had pulled him off missions and forced him to go get help, and he was doing his best to prevent it. He did his mindfulness exercise and wrote in a journal every night and forced himself to get eight hours of sleep a night even when he really didn't want to. But it wasn't enough. He needed someone to talk to in order to help him process everything that had happened, but he didn't dare risk calling anyone back in the US in case his calls got traced and someone found out that he was in Wakanda. T’Challa was doing them a huge favor by letting them hide here, and Steve didn't want to repay him by having Tony finding out that T’Challa lied about them not being in his kingdom.

Steve was also desperate just to have something to do. He tried to make himself useful, but T’Challa and his security force had yet to need his help. They put him into the guard rotation, but Steve suspected they had just done it to make him feel like he was contributing. So mostly, Steve just sat around in the room where Bucky was being kept in cryofreeze and read and sketched and tried to keep it together.

One day, after being in Wakanda for three months, Steve was standing on the roof of the compound. The view up here was stunning, the lush and colorful plants and wildlife so different from the cityscape he was used to. Steve sat by the edge of the roof, hands rested on the tiles to ground himself and worked on keeping his breathing steady as he stared at the drop. No matter the circumstances, he wasn't going to let this get bad again.

T’Challa appeared beside Steve in a way that would have shocked Steve when he first arrived here, but he had gotten used to T’Challa's ability to walk without making a sound. T’Challa held a phone out to Steve.

"It's for you," he said, handing over the phone and then walking back down the hallway to give Steve some privacy.

"Hello?" Steve said, trying to guess who could possibly be on the line.

"Steve," replied Natasha, of course it was Natasha, "T’Challa called me and told me he was worried about you."

She paused, clearly waiting for a response, but Steve had no idea what to say to that, especially considering that it was a statement not a question.

"I've been better," he said after a considerable pause.

"Look," she said, "I'm not going to lie and tell you that things are great here. Tony's still pretty pissed off, but I've been working on that ever since you left. And with Rhodey doing well, and T’Challa calling to say that he didn't want to get involved but that he 'couldn't with good conscious do nothing' about you, I've gotten Tony to come around."

Steve waited for a further explanation, but Natasha left it there like that was a complete story. "So what does that mean exactly?" he asked.

"It means you and your popsicle friend are coming back to the States, so Tony can work on getting Barnes defrosted and you can go back to therapy so I don't have any more kings calling me to tell me that they're worried you're going to throw yourself off the roof."

Steve wasn't entirely sure what to do with that information. After how they'd left things, Steve was shocked that Tony wasn't going to attack them on sight let alone help Bucky. And he was also a bit disconcerted by why T’Challa thought he was going to jump off the roof, that is he was confused until he realized that from the outside, his habit of standing on the roof to try and keep his fear of heights under control could easily look like something else entirely.

  
"Thanks, Nat," he said, but she'd already hung up.

 

 

Steve didn't understand how so many of their missions required them fighting in the upper stories of buildings or on rooftops or in planes that were in the air. Now that he was back in therapy, and Bucky was no longer in cryofreeze, Steve was doing much better with his fear of heights, but still he wasn't a big fan and sometimes it felt like their enemies had found out somehow that he didn't do well with heights and had planned their battle locations accordingly. This time, some Hydra agents had managed to build a smaller version of the helicarriers and they seemed to be heading toward the State of the Union address. Naturally, Steve and the other Avengers couldn't have found out about this plot before the helicarrier was up in the air, so they were packed into several jets, using the extra speed that the smaller size of the jet allowed to catch up with the helicarrier in mid-air. The plan was to land on top of it and then fight their way in and take back control before the reached DC, which, according to Tony's calculations should only be thirty minutes. Thirty minutes to catch up to, land on, and fight their way into the control room of a giant flying aircraft. Fun.

Steve went through his breathing exercises as they flew, reminding himself that things would be better once they got there, and his focus would be on fighting not about being thousands of feet in the air and what would happen if they failed this mission.

"Steve," Bucky said, resting his hand on Steve's knee, "you okay?"

Steve turned to face Bucky who was strapped in to the seat next to him and gave him a little smile. Bucky had started going on missions with the rest of the team four months ago which was about eight months after they got back from Wakanda. Tony and a bunch of other scientists had been able to "deprogram" Bucky, meaning they were able to get rid of all of Hydra's codes that trigger Bucky into being the Winter Soldier again. After they were certain that worked, and after a whole lot of therapy, Bucky had felt ready to start fighting again and had eventually been clear to be a part of the Avengers. Bucky wasn't "fixed" per say, but then again neither was Steve. Neither of them would ever be the same people they were before WWII, but they were learning to be okay with that.

Steve knew that Bucky would see through his forced smile, and they had agreed to be open with each other, so Steve told Bucky what was happening rather than trying to hide it.

"I'm hanging in there," Steve said. "Not a big fan of heights, is all."

Bucky frowned slightly, and despite how they both had changed, Steve could still read him well enough to know what he was thinking. Bucky had gotten enough of his memories back that he knew the big picture details of his life. He could recall all the really important stuff, but he was missing some of the smaller things, which Steve tried to help fill him in on. Right now, Bucky was trying to recall knowing that Steve was afraid of heights, which he couldn't because Steve hadn't been afraid of heights until after Bucky fell off the train, but Bucky didn't know that and was annoyed at himself for not remembering.

"I wasn't afraid of them in the forties, if that's what you're thinking about," Steve said. "It happened after that."

Bucky looked up at him, head tilted and one corner of his mouth turned down into a slight pout, a look which meant he was confused. He wanted to know what had happened to make Steve afraid of heights, but Steve couldn't say it. Not right now, at least. Maybe he would bring it up at their next couples therapy session when they weren't about to go fight a battle that would change the course of history. They'd started going to couples therapy in addition to their individual sessions days after getting back together. Maybe it wasn't the most romantic way to celebrate being a couple again (and to be fair, it wasn't the only way they celebrated it), but they both thought it would be a good idea. They had both changed so much since before, and they had things they needed to work through, so it made sense to both of them that there would be things they would need help to work through together. Steve felt a real smile replace his forced one as he let himself remember the day they had gotten back together.

Steve had been just sitting on the couch in their suite in the Avengers tower doing his daily journaling when Bucky had come back from a therapy session.

"Hey, Steve?" Bucky asked as he walked through the door.

"In here, Buck," Steve had said, glancing up from his notebook to see the nervous look on Bucky's face as he walked into the living room.

"Are you okay?" Steve said, concerned that the session had gone poorly. Even though it was clear that they were helping, sometimes when Bucky came back he seemed worse than when he had left. It wasn't easy for him to talk about everything he'd gone through, even if it was important that he did.

"Yeah," Bucky said, running his hand through his hair and sitting in the chair opposite of Steve. "I want to talk to you about something, though."

"Okay," Steve said, setting his notebook to the side so Bucky knew he had Steve's full attention.

"It's not," Bucky started, "it's not bad. You don't have to look worried because it's not bad. It's just that I remembered something, or well, that makes it sound like I just remembered it, but I've remembered for a while now, and I just didn't know how to bring it up, but Dr. Kelly told me that I should just be honest with you, so here goes. I remember how we used to be before all this craziness happened. How we used to be, you know, more than just friends."

Steve couldn't help the blush that rose on his cheeks as he remembered what Bucky meant by "more than friends."

"Yeah," Steve said, "I know."

Bucky's knee bounced as he started to talk again, which was a new habit he'd picked up that Steve thought was rather endearing. "So, well I guess I was just wondering if you'd like to be like that again. What do you think?"

A smile broke out on Steve's face. "I think," he said, "that I'd like to kiss you."

Bucky pulled him out of the memory by asking, "what are you thinking about?"

Steve pressed a gentle kiss to Bucky's lips. "I was thinking about the day when we got back together."

Bucky seemed a bit surprised by the sudden change in Steve's mood, but he wasn't going to protest. Bucky held Steve's hand in his metal one for the rest of the flight. When Tony announced that it was time for them to land, Bucky brought his lips to his ear to whisper “don’t worry about the height. If you fall, I’ll catch you.”

Steve rolled his eyes at the corniness of it, but secretly he thought it was sweet.

 

 

Bucky liked it up on the roof. He like the slight breeze you could catch up there and the quiet and he liked being able to keep an eye on things from above. Normally, he didn’t go up there because Steve was around, and while Steve went up there with him sometimes, Bucky could tell that Steve didn’t find it peaceful like he did, and Bucky hated making Steve feel anything less than amazing. But Steve had gone into the city for some meeting or something that Bucky hadn’t entirely been listening too, so Bucky was alone for the morning. Plus, Tony was doing some major repairs on his metal arm, so he was going without it for the day, which always made Bucky irritable. He hated the feeling of reaching for something only to realize that the arm he’d been trying to use was gone and being off-balance from the missing weight. So when Bucky had woken up to an empty bed and a missing arm, he knew today was going to be a roof day. He pulled on a pair of white, silky pajama pants over his boxers, poured himself a mug of coffee from the pot Steve must’ve brewed from him before he left for his meeting, and started up the many flights of stairs. He could’ve taken the elevator, but he did about as well with tight spaces as Steve did with heights, so he opted against it.

He was sitting with his feet dangling off the roof watching Sam and that spider-kid messing around on the edge of the tree line that was on the far side of the field out back of the Avengers training compound when he heard the door to the stairwell creak open behind him.

“I thought I might find you up here,” Steve said, walking tentatively over to where Bucky was sitting, stopping a bit short, and settling down about a foot away from the edge. “What are they doing?” Steve said gesturing to Sam and Peter.

“Training exercises,” Bucky said, “though from the looks of it, it seems to have turned into an extreme version of the ground is lava.”

Steve chuckled and watched the pair duck in and out of the trees, Sam’s wingspan limited by the dense layer of branches, and Peter trying not to slam into any trees while swinging on his webs. He ran his fingers absentmindedly through Bucky’s shaggy hair, which served the dual benefit of being something Steve knew Bucky loved and something that was helping Steve to feel safe and grounded despite only being about a foot away from a fifteen-story drop. They watched for a while longer until Sam and Peter abandoned the trees to come into the field to work on a different exercise which appeared to be Peter trying to use his webs to catch a variety of flying objects.

“I’m ready to go in now,” Bucky said, turning his head around to face Steve.

Steve nodded and stood, and watched with a frown as Bucky stood looking unsteady and leaning to the left as if he was overcompensating for the thirty-pound hunk of metal that was usually attached to his left side. Behind Bucky, Peter shouted “watch out” as he missed one of the disks that Sam had thrown up in the air. There was no way it was going to go high enough to hit them on the roof, but at Peter’s cry, Bucky had whipped around to see what was happening and that had been enough to throw him far enough off balance that he couldn’t recover from it. Steve watched as that nightmare he still had at least a couple times a week came to life, and Bucky fell backwards, arm up reaching for something to grab onto but finding nothing. The air was gone from Steve’s lungs and the air felt icy despite it being the summer and he could hear someone screaming “Bucky” but he wasn’t sure if was himself or just an echo of a memory. Before he could think it through, Steve found himself jumping off the edge of the building, arms reaching out to try and latch onto Bucky’s. He didn’t look at the ground that was rushing up to meet him, all he saw was Bucky a few inches below him. He managed to grab hold of Bucky’s hand, and suddenly he wasn’t falling anymore. It took him a moment to process what had happened and realized that Sam had managed to catch Bucky and since Steve was holding onto Bucky’s hand, Steve wasn’t falling anymore either. Sam lowered them to the ground and settle the three of them down in the grass.

As soon as his feet hit grass, Steve was pulling Bucky more solidly into his grasp. He needed to know that Bucky was all right.

Distantly he could hear Sam grumbling like “would’ve been easier if you hadn’t jumped after him. Not like you were going to accomplish anything that way” but too much of Steve was back in the mountains in Germany for him to pay attention to what Sam was saying.

“Bucky, are you okay? Are you hurt? Your arm, its—”

Bucky interrupted him and place his hand on the side of Steve’s face to force Steve to look him in the eyes rather than being distracted by accessing potential danger.

“Steve, I’m fine. I’m not hurt. You’re not hurt. Sam caught us. And my arm is in Tony’s lab getting repairs. It’s 2018, baby, not 1944. Look at me; everything’s all right.”

Steve stared at Bucky for a few moments longer before he understood everything that Bucky was saying.

“I couldn’t,” Steve said, “I couldn’t let you fall again. I had to catch you.”

“And you did,” Bucky said. “You caught me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to Rasetsunyo for the beautiful artwork! In case it's not showing up here, here's a link to view it: http://i1243.photobucket.com/albums/gg554/fallingrbbartbyrasetsunyo/caprevbb_rasetsunyo_coloured_zps4kdiaba9.png
> 
> Also, come hang out with us on Tumblr at rasetsunyo.tumblr.com and fireworks-and-cryofreeze.tumblr.com!


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